A ten-minute diversion for a Saturday night…
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Of course it’s not “realistic” to pretend someone could learn Gaelic in six months from a textbook, but realism is not an essential element of the motion-picture art, is it?
(H/t James Fallows at the Atlantic)
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General Stuck
For Hummingbird lovers
pic 1
pic 2
pic 3
Steeplejack
@General Stuck:
Excellent! And who doesn’t love hummingbirds?
John Cole
For all the naysayers, the shower was fun. Couple dozen people, good food, good drinks, and a great Saturday night. Ate my weight in spanikopita.
General Stuck
Well, la tee da.
slag
@John Cole: Right on. Weddings and showers are two things I tend to avoid like the plague. Good to know they don’t all run afoul of the Geneva Conventions.
Yutsano
@John Cole:
eemom will be jealous. I’m right along with her there. Spanakopita is Greek crack I swear.
As for the video, a lot of interesting factual oddities, like the fact that a Taiwanese wouldn’t know how to eat with a knife and fork. Unless he was from the really remote villages, he would have at least some exposure to Western culture and Western customs. Plus he should be having words with the publisher of that book, it seems a huge oversight to glance over the fact that Ireland is a bilingual country. The fortunate part is that Gaelic education is on the rise there, so the signs aren’t totally useless.
CorgiFan
At least Cole has enough of a life to get invited to spend an evening in person with actual, flesh-and-blood people.
Anne Laurie
@John Cole:
I love spanikopita, but that’s only a single 3x3x3 serving, amirite?
dopealope
Very enjoyable video. Thanks.
slag
@Yutsano:
Tiropitakia. Like Spanakopita but without the healthier side-effects.
ellaesther
While John Cole was at a baby shower, I was throwing a birthday party for a big girl who used to be my baby….
Well, she’s still kind of little, at 7, though she feels Very Big now.
But we had a magician, and a funny one at that, so while I did not eat my weight in spanikopita, I did have a bang-up good time. What is it about the belly laugh of your own child that can make all the world seem right and good?
CorgiFan
@ellaesther:
Indeed!
Pixie
heh I saw this video when I was at Blas at the University of Limerick for my Irish dance….we got to take Gaelic lessons in addition to our dance and history lessons. It was pretty neat and I think it would be cool to be stuck in a Gaeltacht for a couple years to be immersed in the language. I would listen to TG4 in my free time…I really like the sound of the language….it sounds really primitive, but I like it =P
John Cole
And now, like any real AMERIKAN with a buzz on a summer’s eve, I’m drinking a heineken, listening to Little Feat, and I have my bitches on my lap.
Yutsano
@slag: That is indeed da shiznit. Right up there with saganaki in nutritional value, but no phyllo. The Greeks certainly know how to do rich foods well.
@ellaesther: I’m hoping you compensated by eating your weight in rugelach. It seems rather fitting for a kid’s party, plus a little taste of home to boot. Hard to imagine young ones getting into falafel.
Xecky Gilchrist
realism is not an essential element of the motion-picture art, is it?
There’s a second opinion for you – do you remember the pissing and moaning on this site about Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull?
burnspbesq
I am so screwed. The kid finished the classroom component of driver ed today. Now he can go take the written test, get his permit, and start the behind-the-wheel part. I’m freaking out. I have no idea how my parents went through this process six times without going completely bat-gauno crazy.
slag
@Yutsano:
Fo’ shizzle.
(Sorry. I couldn’t help myself.)
suzanne
@burnspbesq:
My mom hired a driving instructor for me after it became clear that we would not get through teaching me how to drive with our relationship intact. I think, while I was out with the instructor, she was home getting +1, then +2, aw, what the hell, +6. Though she still freaks out easily when I drive her places. Consider it.
Steeplejack
@burnspbesq:
Try this on for size: In Texas in the ’60s you could get a learner’s permit at age 12 and a full driver’s license at 14, which I did. I still cannot imagine how my father dealt with that–teaching me to drive when I was 12–and I still find it hard to believe that after I got my full license he would occasionally let me drop him at work and then drive his beloved baby blue Mustang to school. WTF?!
ETA: And this was stick, not automatic.
slag
@burnspbesq: Coincidentally, I was just reading this article about how our culture tends to consider non-drivers freaks and losers. I never noticed it before, but now that I do, it kind of makes me want to drive even less. Maybe show him the article and point out how “counter-culture” he could be if he chose not to drive?
Seonachan
Love the Yu Ming. The same director did an even funnier short, starring Stephen Rea as a Dublin stiff who wakes up from a bender to find he can only speak and understand Gaelic: Fluent Dysphasia/
Adam Lang
Excellent video. Have to forward it on to my girlfriend, who is a fluent Irish speaker in the US… I know she’ll appreciate the ironies.
She can’t see it just now: she’s busy teaching traditional Irish music, which is another thing that isn’t as healthy in Ireland as it ought to be. Everyone there is apparently crazy for bluegrass, if you can believe it.
John Cole
General Stuck
@John Cole: Most excellent!!
Tattoosydney
@John Cole:
Thanks, Mr Cole, for posting my story.
Delia has supplied the second instalment to the story, I suspect.
General Stuck
deleted for duplicity
General Stuck
Allman Brother – Whipping Post
recorded a year before Duane’s tragic death. What could have been.
MikeJ
@Tattoosydney:
Cole’s been to 14th street in DC.
MoeLarryAndJesus
The video is awesome. My mother is a native Gaelic speaker from the Gaeltacht region. I wish I knew more than a few words and phrases.
I also wish I had some Guinness in the house.
Yutsano
@MikeJ: Or 1st Avenue in Seattle. And I will be working very close to there. Oh wait…forget I just said that.
Comrade Kevin
The Liffey Liqueur you get in cans and bottles in the USA isn’t suitable for drinking. It’s more useful as something to unclog drains with.
Lysana
Just for the record, I realize the older term for Irish is Gaelic, but it’s called Irish now. Kind of a sore spot for some folks.
Yutsano
Okay, not only is this video out and out funny, he gives probably the best diss against those who think community organizing is a bad thing:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IAc0OmQ1PpY&feature=related
eco2geek
@General Stuck: Your hummingbird pictures are amazing.
A question for you know-it-alls: A gal I took horse lessons from swore that, if you were going to correct one of her horses (Arabians, if it matters), you had about 3 seconds to do it from the time they did the action you wanted to correct. Otherwise, they wouldn’t know WTF you were yelling at them about. Short memories.
So, if your dog (say, an Akita) got into the garbage, would you have about the same amount of time to correct her? In other words, if you hauled her back into the kitchen 5 minutes later and said, NO! would she be clueless?
P.S. to JC: So, can we post YouTube clips in the comments too? :-) That’s one of my favorite albums.
MikeJ
Why didn’t I notice this a week ago?
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2010/07/30/98402/birther-attorney-orly-taitz-still.html
That’s right. Oily Taint is challenging that the signature belongs to Clarence Thomas. Wow.
Yutsano
@eco2geek: Horses and dogs are corrected by two completely different set of stimuli. Horses are primarily corrected by repetition and calmness, the LAST thing you do is yell at a horse. They are prey animals, and their flight response is still very strong. You can make a sharp noise, but threatening a horse is a sure way to get an uncompliant animal.
Dogs evolved in a totally different fashion. They respond to both physical and audible stimuli, however they do not have long memories of what they have just done. I read a great article about how a dog’s behavior must be corrected NOW or else the dog will think you’re yelling at it (English needs a better genderless pronoun but I digress) so it thinks whatever behavior it does now is what you’re trying to correct.
Hopefully that helped.
eco2geek
@Yutsano: That answered my question, thanks.
Speaking of yelling: One of this woman’s Arabians liked to nip you when you weren’t looking. Made for an interesting time when you were brushing him off and saddling him. One day she was in a bad mood, he bit her one too many times, and she just hauled off and punched him in the neck. Yelled, too. Didn’t have much of an effect on him. I had to stifle a chuckle.
You’re right about calmness and repetition, but with those two Arabians I’m not sure who was training whom. It seemed like the horse was training the rider a lot of the time.
Bill E Pilgrim
I’m not even going to ask.
Onward:
The WikiLeaks subject is large and thorny, and I’m not going to take on the whole debate in this comment, but I was just struck by the continued display of sheer, blind arrogance by people like good old David Brooks, who was asked about the topic on the News Hour and I just watched:
If getting thousands of American and coalition soldiers killed and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis killed is “reasonably careful” about not getting people killed, then I’d really hate to see how many they’d get killed if they weren’t careful.
Yes. We take documents. We believe everything they say. We ask Bush and the military and the rest of the administration which parts we should print. Then we print them.
Who could ask for more?
burnspbesq
@Adam Lang:
The commonalities between Celtic music and bluegrass are many.
Four times in the last 15 years, BBC and RTE have sponsored the production of a TV series called “Transatlantic Sessions.” Jerry Douglas and Aly Bain jointly pick a bunch of great players and singers, and everyone goes off to a big old country house somewhere in Scotland to make music together. The results are fantastic.
Many clips from the shows have made it onto YouTube. For a taste, search on “Karan Casey” and chichi out her duet with James Taylor on “The King’s Shilling.”
Coda Music in Edinburgh (www.codamusic.co.uk) is a great source for Celtic music CDs and DVDs.
Bill E Pilgrim
@burnspbesq: You may know this, but even more than bluegrass, what Americans call “Old Timey” or “Old Time” music has even more direct connections to traditional music across the pond.
For musicians bluegrass and old timey are two distinct things, traditionally. Bluegrass definitely has some roots in the same music but with old time music it’s direct and well-acknowledged, i.e. that it springs right from traditions in the UK and elsewhere in Europe via Appalachia and so on.
Interesting essay about it here, just from a quick Googling:
http://www.dwightdiller.com/bluegrass.html
harlana
If I were 6 years old again, Jack in the Box commercials would have given me nightmares.
satby
Thanks for this video Annie Laurie. It’ll be greatly enjoyed by my Irish family, esp. my (adopted) son Zhou!
debit
@eco2geek: Arabians are crazy smart, and in some bloodlines that’s literal. Mine were always fun to work with, but also sometimes a challenge.
Horses tend to live in now and remember things in fifteen minute increments. You know how some horses will make it a battle to get them from the pasture? That horse has learned he’s going to be worked or have something else it considers unpleasant done once he’s been brought out. My horses always ran to me because I a) always rewarded them with high value treats at the gate and b) immediately gave them some grain once they were in place to be groomed. By the time they were done being groomed and were ready to be tacked up, any connection with being taken from the pasture was gone.
Correction should be immediate, but it should never be punishment. And frankly, any bad behavior is usually because of rushing training or improper handling by the rider. Granted, some horses can be assholes, but usually they want to please. I deal with nipping horses by “nipping” it back; give it good, hard pinch while swinging my head toward it so it associates the pinch with my teeth, not my hand. The last thing you want your horse to learn is to be afraid of your hands. And this only goes for mouthy horses with a history of nipping. If I was consistently nipped only when tacking the horse up, I’d check my tack and see if it needed adjusting or changing; maybe the horse is trying to tell her something is hurting him.
Ming
@Lysana: I think the clip recognizes that “Irish” is used now to refer to what was once called “Gaelic.” That’s kind of the point — the book Yu Ming consults is so out of date that it uses “Gaelic” so that’s the term he uses; the older guy in the pub consistently refers to it as “Irish” — at least, according to the subtitles!
Sock Puppet of the Great Satan
Nach bhfuil aon duine anseo ablata gaelige a labhairt?
Meg
@Yutsano:
Maybe your comment about knowledge of the knife and fork still holds, but the guy wasn’t Taiwanese. Did you catch the PRC flag behind him at the counter where he worked? Also all the Chinese writing was in simplified Chinese which would not be the case in the country of Taiwan.
Seonachan
@Sock Puppet of the Great Satan: chan eil, a rèir coltais.
Sock Puppet of the Great Satan
Cad é? Ni thigim an gaelige as Alba. Gaelige as a Ulaidh amhaín.
Seonachan
@Sock Puppet of the Great Satan: Thuirt mi: “is cosúil nach bhfuil”. Níl agam ach cúpla focal Ghàidhlig Eireannach.
Corner Stone
You guys are going to totally get the DHS down on this blog.
Comrade Sock Puppet of the Great Satan
“Níl agam ach cúpla focal Ghàidhlig Eireannach. ”
Maith go leor. Nil a lan gaelige agamsa fosta. Ach, is fearr an gaelige briste na Bearla cliste.
Comrade Sock Puppet of the Great Satan
“You guys are going to totally get the DHS down on this blog. ”
Cinnte, ta a lan terroriste ag caint as Gaelige….
[As a kid, I once had an Irish teacher from Andersonstown in Belfast who refused to speak a word of English. When one of the other kids asked if he had any links to the Provos, he answered “Nil go leor bearla agam” (trans. ‘I don’t speak enough English’)]